Bluetooth wireless input devices provide a number of advantages for the end user over similar devices implementing other wireless technologies, including reliability and enhanced security.
In general, Bluetooth is a term used to described the protocol of a short range (e.g., about 10 meters) frequency-hopping radio link between devices to allow wireless connections between the devices. Bluetooth employs Gaussian frequency shift keying to modulate the data to frequencies around 2.4 GHz and is capable of point-to-point or point-to-multipoint communication. This flexibility allows the wireless technology of Bluetooth to penetrate the market in a variety of applications such as heart rate monitors, PDAs (personal digital assistants), and human interface devices (HIDs). The interest in HIDs in particular, such as keyboards and other input devices has expanded as consumers continue to demand improved wireless capabilities when computing at home, at the office or on the go. For this reason, it is expected that this segment of the HID market will grow substantially in the coming years.
The Bluetooth SIG (special interest group) has ratified the Bluetooth HID profile which describes the basic requirements and protocol for HIDs using Bluetooth as the physical layer transport. While the current specification has proven to be well-written in the topics that it covers, some topics were not and have not been directly addressed.
For example, first, it was assumed that the PC BIOS manufacturers would eventually provide native Bluetooth wireless support in the BIOS. Unfortunately, this can be problematic due to the size and complexity of the code needed to handle this. Second, maintaining secure connections remains troublesome under conventional practices. Furthermore, Bluetooth support in the BIOS would require the sharing of security keys between the operating system and the BIOS, which raises additional security risks. In the first generation of Bluetooth supported-devices, security concerns were handled in various ways by various manufacturers, but all have their deficiencies.